Blaming the Victim or Soothing Our Own Anxiety?

I know that as soon as I say anything about blaming the victim, your thoughts about rape, abuse, etc., automatically get your back up. So be it. I’m not saying we should blame the victim, but rather that, by blaming the victim, people are not engaging in the thought process we ascribe to that behavior.

Let me give you an example. A teenage girl is raped, and various people see the story, some of whom point out that she was drinking/smoking/out past curfew/dressed provocatively/hanging out with the wrong crowd/, whatever. Immediately, others will jump in, claiming this first group is “blaming the victim” and what a horrible thing that is. They will instead point to society, using terms like rape culture and misogyny to explain why this occurred.

To me, they are both doing the same thing, looking for a reason why this happened. Whatever you choose to believe is the reason for someone being raped, or a child being abused, or someone being murdered, we all instinctively try to make sense of it, to find a reason why it happened. More importantly, we want to find that reason so that we can convince ourselves that it will never happen to us.

If we can find something, anything, that makes a victim of a horrible crime somehow different from us, then we can maybe convince ourselves that the world is still a safe place as long as we don’t do what they did. On the flip side, if only we could improve society by either getting rid of all abusers or teaching criminals not to commit crimes, then we could all go back to feeling safe. But the world doesn’t work that way. Someone will always abuse. Someone will always commit a crime, someone will always take advantage of another person violently, or financially. That’s why we have laws against those things: so that when they do happen, those who break them will face swift consequences. (Whether that actually happens in all cases or not is certainly up for debate, but the theory is sound.)

However, even with the laws in place, there will always be people who break them, and when they do, we will try to explain why someone became a victim, because we don’t want to admit that we could just as easily be that victim.

It’s a tough thing to live with the knowledge that, at any second, you could become a victim through no fault of your own. It’s scary; it can even be paralyzing. So we seek alternative realities. One of those is finding a “reason” why anyone becomes a victim and convincing ourselves that reason doesn’t apply to us; therefore, we are safe. If you genuinely believe we need to stop blaming the victim, and we do, instead of shaming anyone who dares do it, start with an understanding that it is a natural reaction to the lack of control we all feel when we think about horrific crimes. Help people identify the behavior and strengthen them to live in a world where anyone could be a victim. We owe it to them and to the victims.